


Save. Stop

by misslonelyhearts



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Body Horror, Brainwashing, Gen, Marvel Universe, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recurring Dream, Violence, mcu - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 12:26:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2507771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts





	Save. Stop

In the chair, what had been ‘Bucky’ became, briefly, a meat tube.    
  
That’s all a body is, his body. Essentially, just a tube supported by muscle and bone, blood and string. All the ends of him, the not-tube parts, had been cold, and much of the central bulk too, but he’d done certain things out of near-involuntary necessity. A body must eat and drink, breathe and shit. Its other functions being helpful, but ultimately secondary: see the footprint in sand, hear the chambering of a round, smell the diesel fire, feel the bite of knuckle and cheek.    
  
From New Jersey to Pennsylvania, Colorado to the coast of California, from base to hidden base, he becomes a more thoughtful tube.  Steve and Sam aren’t as thorough as the chair, but they change him. Their procedure, thankfully, is not cold. Steve searches for him, and then _with_ him. Sam eats and drinks _with_ him.  When he bites, it’s not for pain. It takes months, but they make him infinitely more Bucky than tube.    
  
The last thing a body must do, and never forget, is rest.  In sleep the mind takes over, Bucky’s mind, too long abhorred by the tube. This too is necessary and involuntary.  
  
Though his nightmares don’t evaporate, neither do the better dreams, the ones in which he can fly, the ordinary ones that tear him up worse for their realness.  The ones in which he is so warm, and such a. . . _person_.  The one without a beginning that comes to no end.    
  
The one in which he walks a nameless highway, for unknown miles, and a man in a truck rolls up alongside him.  
  
***  
He’s never thinking anything at the start, just walking at a steady pace.  His stomach isn’t full or empty.  His face feels smooth and tight, as if he’d just stepped out of a barber shop.  There are no signs on the road, no mile markers.  If his brain knows where he’s supposed to be going, it doesn’t share.  But he goes on because it’s so much worse not to, because there’s an abyssal drop waiting for him if he doesn’t.  
  
The road is always straight, two lanes of tar-top with shoulders of white gravel, and thick walls of greenblack trees on either side. Pines or firs. It’s always some pastel shade of early day, and cool.  He always wears a canvas jacket.  His shoes are always thinner than they should be for this work.  
  
The truck always approaches from behind him.  It is Band-Aid beige in all the places rust hasn’t eaten it up.  And it’s a loud old thing, a real _jalopy_ , with streaky windows and no plates.  There’s always a pin up girl click-pen somewhere in the console, and the glove box always rattles unless he puts his knee against it.  The shield is always somewhere in the cab.  
  
The brakes always whistle.  The driver always leans over to crank the window down.    
  
“Hey,” they say in many voices. Always. “Need a lift?”  
  
***  
The Steve behind the wheel wears a gaudy stars and stripes get up.  There are goddamn _tights_.  He moves the shield to the back of the cab, so there’s space on the seat, and Bucky climbs in.  
  
“Where to, buddy?”  
  
Bucky glances out the dirty back window, at the ordinary highway that he’d been walking, and says, “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”  
  
Steve’s jaw flexes.  
  
“In case you haven’t been paying attention, there’s a war on,” he says. “Are you running to it, or from it?”  
  
He never runs in this dream.  He should try it once, to see if he even can.  Bucky slouches down in the seat and props his foot on the dash.  When he looks over, Steve’s an embarrassment of stars and stripes, grippy hands on the wheel, and a strength he wears even worse than the suit they made for him.  And he doesn’t know Bucky at all.  
  
“Well, at the moment,” Bucky replies, with a smile so underused it slides right off again, “I’m riding with you.”  
  
Steve says, “Yeah, but how far?”    
  
Beneath those drawn-up puppy eyebrows is an idea about what they’re supposed to be. Like always.  
  
“You tell me,” Bucky sighs.  
  
“Til . .” Steve stops, confused, as the end of the line dies unborn in his mouth.   
  
The treeline up ahead, over the rise, moves no closer.  But the truck is clangy and the road roars under the tires like it always does.  Steve doesn’t know anything because Bucky doesn’t know.  With his jaw jumping, his blue eyes clamped on the road, he’s not Steve Rogers or Captain America.  He’s nothing but a needle-skip.  
  
“Let me out.”  
  
***  
  
The shield has never looked so small.    
  
In this one it’s a button, like a campaign pin ( _NO MAN IS GOOD THREE TIMES, Carry On With Roosevelt_ ), worn by seventeen-year-old Steve.  
  
He’s looked smaller, but not much.  The steering wheel seems bigger than his whole body and Bucky could just cry from it, those dry, throat-knotting dream sobs.  Cry for how Steve has to lean forward to keep pressure on the pedal.  
  
In this one, it’s the worst Steve.  In this one it’s how much he loves the world, in a jacket and pants he got from St. Paul’s rummage and will wear for ten years. Because he can be poor or he can grow out of his clothes, but he can’t do both.  But it’s okay.  He only complains in his sleep.  
  
“Hey, it’s okay,” says Steve, shrugging. “Everyone needs a lift now and then.”  
  
Bucky looks out the window at the blur of pine trees, fist clenched hard against his mouth.  If he doesn’t find something else, say something familiar and smart-mouthed, he’s going to lose it.  He’s going to open the door and jump.  The click-pen in the console catches his eye.  After so many versions of this scene, so many memorized details about the truck, he knows the pen from top to bottom: curvy brunette, scarlet wiggle dress, matching high heels, turn it upside down and get a cheap thrill.   
  
“Where’d you get _this_?”  He snatches it up and waves it in Steve’s face.  A babyface that turns redder than the disappearing dress.  
  
Steve bites his lip and stammers, “Oh, uhmm, well that was a. . .I mean, it wasn’t,” until Bucky’s grin turns into a chuckle. It turns into brief, shared laughter.  
  
“Pretty slick.”  Bucky upends the pen, watching the girl lose her dress.  He notices for the first time that she’s got stockings, too, with a sexy seam running up the back of her calves.  “She do anything else?”  
  
Steve nods, the quality of his smile changes, but it remains.  
  
“She signed my enlistment forms,” he says.  Noticing the shift in Bucky’s expression, he adds seriously, “Girls have a sense of duty, too.”  
  
For a painful minute Bucky just drinks in his face.  He nods, tracing the reappearing dress with his thumb.  “All the best ones do.”  
  
The cab of the truck is quiet for what feels like a hundred comfortable miles.  Though the treeline over the rise doesn’t move closer, Bucky is as happy as he’s allowed to be here.  Steve reaches out and snaps on the radio, confused static filters out of the speaker until he settles on a station.  
  
Billie Holiday sings that Bucky can help himself, but don’t take too much. _God bless the child_. He doesn’t feel like crying any more, and the pen in his hand is pretty great, all dreams considered.  
  
Bucky sinks down in the seat and props his foot on the dash.  He falls asleep pretending that there’s sun at their backs, kids shouting in the waves, and Brighton sand under their feet.  
  
***  
He forgets to breathe for a minute when the truck rolls up alongside him.  
  
In this one, the driver is all metal.    
  
It must be Steve, it usually is.  His body is a series of moving metal plates in dark, inky blue, with a white star painted on his chest.  The bulb lights in his eye sockets are a dingy, throbbing yellow.  
  
Bucky hesitates, but climbs in.   
  
In this one, they don’t talk.  The truck tilts, struggling to hit forty under their combined weight, and the glove box rattles until Bucky pushes his knee against it.  In this one, the cab of the truck feels like an icebox, cold enough that there should be frost at the edges of the windows.  But Bucky doesn’t shiver from that alone, at first.  
  
As he drives, Metal Steve begins to hum, a wheezing sickly accordion sound.  The tune is _Straighten Up & Fly Right_.  Some version of Bucky, a once-upon-a-USO Bucky, knows it’s perfectly Steve. Corny as hell.  But the song dribbles out of Metal Steve’s face in a series of tinny notes over electric clicks, and all possible Buckys shrink in horror.  
  
 _Straighten up and fly right. Cool down papa don’t you blow your top._  
  
Warbling metallic voice. Yellow bulb eyes pulsing.  
  
 _The buzzard told the monkey you’re chokin me._   
  
Metal Steve drums his fingers lightly on the steering wheel, tapping to the music.  Like typewriter keys.    
  
 _Release your hold and I’ll set you free._  
  
Tappa clink, tappa clink. Tappa tap clink. Bucky’s skin crawls. He exhales a stuttering cloud of breath. Metal Steve goes on singing and whirring.  
  
 _The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye, and said. . ._  
  
He has to stop it, that cheerful clacking has to stop or his heart certainly will.  Nerves screaming ( _Your story’s so touching but it sounds just like a lie_ ), Bucky reaches out his hand, his real-enough and fragile hand, to stop Steve’s fingers. They’re smooth and icy.  
  
Somewhere inside the chest plates, behind the painted star, it’s like a radio knob turns. The music dies off.   
  
Metal Steve swivels his creaky head to the right.  Those yellow bulbs surge abruptly bright, unflickering, and Bucky is so cold that it’s a comfort to close his eyes.   
  
***  
“Hey.  Need a lift?”  
  
He wishes it would rain, just once, for variety.  Bucky climbs in.  
  
The man behind the wheel is James Buchanan Barnes himself, old as dirt and just as dry, double bars on his lapel, and the empty left arm of his parade uniform folded up.  Between them on the seat is a service cap. Gold eagle, braid, the works.  
  
“Where to, son?”  
  
“ _Son_.” Bucky snorts. “That’s just . . .swell.”  
  
“I don’t have to call you anything at all.”  Captain Barnes gets stiff, well, stiffer, behind the wheel.  “Just sit here in silence until we get where we’re going.”  
  
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Bucky says.  The treeline up ahead, over the rise, moves no closer.  Bored, Bucky checks the old familiars: the streaky windows, the pen in the console, the rattling glove box.  He fiddles with the radio until Captain Barnes glares at him.  He twists the rearview to look at himself and spots a strange shape against the back window. “Hey, where’d you get this?”  
  
Bucky hauls the old shield out from behind the seat.  It’s elongated, not round.  A classic heater shield.  
  
“That’s, uh, classified,” says Captain Barnes, and then clears his throat.  
  
Bucky runs a hand across the three stars at the top.  The old man doesn’t stop him.  
  
“Always thought this thing would’ve been right at home in a Ringling Brothers show,” he says.  
  
It earns him a brittle laugh from Captain Barnes. “Maybe so.”  
  
Turning it over, Bucky finds a mess of faded signatures on the back.   
  
“Us too,” Bucky says. The names read like tangled string, but he knows who they are. “The whole brigade was a circus.”  
  
Captain Barnes eases back into the seat a little, warming as matches do among their own kind. “You served?  What division?”  
  
He’s touching them so hard his fingers will smell like metal.  
  
“The best one,” Bucky replies. “For a minute.”  
  
***  
They are grown men doing sixty-five, reminiscing about cars, when Bucky takes the pen from the console and stabs Steve in the neck.  He’s still holding the pen, still ripping across for the carotid, when Steve lets go of the wheel. For this ride it’s him screaming instead of Steve, a nickel’s worth of Cyclone in summertime. Terrible, wild, hoarse screams.  The truck lurches off the road, crosses the shoulder, and slams into a tree.  
  
Bucky’s chest feels broken, caved in against the dash, and Steve’s head seems to be part of the spiderwebbed window now.  Except for the busted engine hissing, it’s quiet.  The lady on the pen sticking out of Steve’s neck slowly loses her dress.  Her red high heels, her perfect calves, follow Bucky down to darkness.  
  
***  
The truck rolls up alongside him and he keeps walking.    
  
He never looks inside the cab, or anywhere but at the gravel that passes under his feet, a busted line of chalky white stone that curves forward over the rise of the hill, and never ends.  Beside him, brakes whistle shrilly as the truck rumbles to a stop.   _“Hey. Need a-”_  
  
He keeps walking, and that might be the best thing, the next thing, the last thing he has to try, to scratch off the list, to push through.   
  
But it feels gut-awful. He manages his steps mechanically, as if there were a man in front and one in back, doing the same.  He doesn’t look over his shoulder.    
  
It’s wrong to go on.   
  
It’s not.   
  
No one tells him what or where or for how long.  It’s wrong.  He keeps walking and his body hurts him, the only code it knows. It’s so goddamn wrong, not to look or stop.  
  
In this one, his knees seize up, moaning for a ride, but he keeps walking. In this one, he doesn’t glance back at the parked truck with its engine ticking down.  Stopping isn’t an option.  He wants it to be.  But even dying hadn’t felt this wrong, even killing.    
  
There’s unreal sunlight breaking the treeline ahead, shining from a place he’s never gotten to.  Behind him the truck might be on fire, it might be empty or gone.  His knees threaten to explode, and his left arm goes numb. But he keeps walking.  
  
***  
It takes the sun two minutes and eighteen seconds to rise above the pimply hills outside of Coronado.  From the first bright line to the fully rounded curve, two minutes and eighteen seconds of gold.  He’s on the roof when the sun comes up because the tract houses and shopping malls and garbage trucks are always the first to see it.  They meet that first, warm touch without ever reaching for it.    
  
Bucky eases down off the roof when it’s over.  The sun’s up, Steve and Sam are somewhere, running in a circle for fun, and there’s an old-school crime Bucky would like to exercise; An infraction that predates almost all the rest he’s committed.  From the roof he’d spotted a pickup truck, parked several blocks down the residential street, not a jalopy (which don’t seem to exist anymore), but old enough.  He pulls up his hood and leaves the yard.  
  
The truck’s got good tires, power locks, but no alarm.  He still remembers how to do this, it’s an old set of muscle movements so familiar that for a minute he’s fifteen years old, with shitty shoes and a skinny friend crouched on the ground beside the car.  When the door clicks, he climbs in.  
  
The truck smells like cigarettes and pine needles. He finds loose change among the crumpled gum wrappers in the center console.  Nobody’s out this early, no one to see him, get scared, and call the cops.  He ducks down anyway.  After a few stripped and twisted wires the truck belches to life.  
  
Bucky fastens his seat belt and steers toward the coast.  
  
He finds the spot eleven minutes later, an informal jogging track that’s mostly hard-packed beach on the long end. Running it, in the sunrise afterburn, is Steve. Churning sand, arms pumping, exhausted by everything but exercise.  A figure half a mile back might be Sam, but it’s hard to tell.  
  
Bucky pulls the truck out of the shadow of a surf shop, turns onto the seaside strip of road, and rolls along until the big man sprinting on the beach notices.  The windows are automatic, so Bucky nudges the button.  Steve veers off the beach and jogs up to the passenger-side of the truck, leaning in on his elbows.   
  
“Just a wild guess here, but,” he says, looking around the interior, “you didn’t exactly come by this vehicle legally, did you?”  
  
Bucky shakes his head no.  It’s not in him to look sorry about it. Yet.  Steve nods.   Together they look down the beach, tracking Sam’s progress.  They’ll pick him up, too.  He’ll want breakfast, and of Sam’s numerous rituals breakfast is Bucky’s favorite.  But for now this adventure isn’t translating right. Steve doesn’t get in.  
  
The engine idles, but neither of them speak and Steve doesn’t open the door.  He breathes a little too deliberately, scrubs his hands over his face, but he doesn’t get in the truck and Bucky starts to process.  
  
It’s that he can function, petty crime and khakis and all.  He can drive away and disappear, better this time, and that’s why Steve’s face looks the way it does.    
  
“So, are you offering me a lift?”  
  
This Steve is the realest of all.  The star on all his gear may as well be just a plain, old-fashioned heart.  Bucky’s sure he’s real because he’s still here. The look on his face is something a troubled mind can’t reproduce in a dream, and it says a lot about what’s not an option for Steve Rogers. Like the truck. How he’ll never step back for fear of getting run down if he can just have faith that one day he won’t have to.  
  
Bucky musters a smile.  
  
“Do you need one?”  
  
Steve squints, looking down the beach at Sam and back again, hands on his hips.  
  
“I guess I do, yeah.”  
  
He climbs in.


End file.
